Film: A moment out...

Not certain when these were taken since they were on a roll of film that I got back not too long ago. I think I may have shared a single frame from this set in a previous post. I was practicing metering with my film camera with the light back-lighting the subject. When the sun is high, it makes for very bright, harsh, unflattering light. That is why photographers like to shoot either early in the morning, or during the few hours preceding sunset.

There are tricks to employ when you have no choice. One being to find open shade. Meaning, put the subject in a shaded spot, but towards the edge where the sun and shadow meets. This serves to allow the sun to indirectly light the subject and do it an a soft and flattering way. If you move too deep into the shadow, the light will often give more of a bluish cast. Which isn't as flattering on skin tones.

Another technique is to have the sun backlight the subject. With the sun to the subject's back, it prevent the squinting that would happen if the sun were to in front of the subject. Shooting in this mode, the camera's internal metering get's confused and fooled by the brightness of the scene, so it'll want to underexpose your photo. You must know to override this by either shooting in manual mode or setting your exposure compensation to +2 or +3. Another way is to put your camera into spot metering mode and lock the meter on the subject's face. Even for photographer's shooting professionally, we must practice to have the confidence that we can override what the camera wants to do to achieve the look we're going for. Anyways, here's a few example of that as I figured out how it looks on film. Thought I'd share.